IPod Nano not recognized by Mac OS 10.3.9

Question

I was given a lovely iPod Nano for Xmas & to my dismay my 4 year old iBook, running OS 10.3.9, popped a message up the screen informing me that I needed OS 10.4.8 or higher. Apart from my displeaure at Apple for this, I have a practical technical problem to solve. I don't suppose there is a shareware solution to this, so I will pass to discussing solutions built around the OS. My iBook G4 dates from November 2003, has 933 GHz of processor power & 640 MB of RAM, the maximum possible. I have been told by a very knowledgeable Mac technician in the UK that OS 10.4 would run faster on my iBook than my present OS 10.3.9, but that Leopard would probably be too taxing, especially since the hard drive is a measly 37 GB with 4 for a maintenance partition, presently leaving only some 8 GB free on the HD. Unfortunately OS 10.4 is no longer on sale in Apple stores or resellers. I could buy it on eBay, but aren't OS's that are bundled with specific models designed to work only on those models, or can I purchase any original OS 10.4 whose owner has passed to Leopard? I'd be grateful for any help you can offer me on this.

Answer 1

Thank you for your input, Catboy, but I fear Leopard will be too taxing for my processor & I know that Tiger is leaner in all respects. I have solved my problem on an immediate basis by going to a friend who has a PC with XP, who inserted my 3 gigs of music onto his iTunes for Microsoft & then downloaded it onto my iPod. So, in this case an Apple product (iPod) could be activated for the benfit of another Apple product (iBook) only by way of a PC running Microsoft XP. That is ironic, but also a bit disgraceful on the part of Apple. It's not as if I were running Puma or Jaguar, which are years out of date. I'm afraid this still sticks in my craw despite Steve Jobs'masterful showmanship at MacWorld Expo.
No one yet has been able to tell me whether versions of Mac OS bundled with a machine are specific to that model of Mac or can be used promiscuously with any Mac with compatible specs. I am very interested in this question, because I plan to pick up a copy of Tiger. I know Apple has pulled Tiger from all their stores & from all dealers, w2hich is going to complicate things for me.
Since I live in Europe, I will see if I can get a copy locally or failing that through eBay in the UK. But I still do need to know the answer to the above question to be sure of compatibility. Thanks to anyone who can help me.